Dakovo

Dakovo is a peaceful little town, where the din of bicycles and the dribbling of basketballs on a Sunday afternoon outdoes the roar of cars. The relatively bustling pedestrian main street is ulica Hrv. Velikana, whose far end has a little parish church that was built rather cleverly from a former 16th-century mosque. The best time to be in town—though a difficult time to book a room on short notice—is the last weekend in September, during the annual Dakovacki Vezovi (Dakovo Embroidery Festival), which sees a whole array of song-and-dance performances, an all-around party atmosphere, and, above all, a folklore show replete with traditional embroidered costumes, folk dancing, and folk singing—and even a show by the famous Lipizzaner horses, who train in town. You can get to Dakovo from Osijek in about 40 minutes by one of several daily trains for roughly 20 Kn one way. The Dakovo train station is 1 km (½ mi) east of the center, at the opposite end of Kralja Tomislava.